The Department of Public Policy and Administration‘s Brown Bag Series will begin its spring season on Thursday, January 30. Dr. Michael Hayes, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration, will present, “Tax and Expenditure Limitations, Salary Reductions, and Employee Turnover.”
This free event will take place at 12:30 p.m. in Armitage Hall’s Faculty Lounge. Guests are invited to bring their lunch and enjoy the presentation.
Presentation Abstract: Previous education policy research have examined possible explanations for why school leaders and teachers remain or leave their schools. One potentially important factor is salary. Interestingly, there has been only a few studies that have attempted to estimate the causal effect of salary reductions on school leaders. This study fills this gap through an analysis of a natural experiment in New Jersey. Starting in 2011, New Jersey set a salary cap for all future superintendent contracts based on student enrollment. The salary cap caused large and sudden reductions in base salaries for a significant number of NJ school superintendents in the initial year. Using a self-complied dataset on NJ superintendent contracts, I find that an additional $10,000 reduction in base salary due to the salary cap corresponds to a 16% increase in the likelihood of superintendent turnover. This is an important contribution to the field of educational administration because the study’s main finding suggests that the relationship between salary and turnover is quite strong for superintendents, especially those in districts with a relatively high number of at-risk students.